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BookExpo America: How book nerd Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dodged bullies

It’s hard to guess what the biggest book to come out of this year’s BookExpo America might be, but I’m pretty sure I spoke with the biggest author.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, all 7-foot-2 of him, was on hand Friday to autograph Sasquatch in the Paint, a book for young readers (co-written with Raymond Obstfeld) coming in September from Disney-Hyperion. Not long ago, an Esquire piece made the rounds, wherein the NBA’s all-time leading scorer stated, in effect, that he was a shy, awkward, bookish kid. “Yeah, I was,” he said.

“The only thing that kept me from getting beat up, though, was: My dad taught me how to box. So I wasn’t a good target for the bullies, you know?” He explained, “I wasn’t an aggressive person. ‘Live and let live’ was my motto.”

Abdul-Jabbar says that in this book, “I’m just trying to talk about the choices kids make as they grow up. Everybody wants to be a movie star or an athlete. Especially in the inner cities, kids don’t think that they have any future unless they’re involved in entertainment or athletics. And their intellect is a great source for having a wonderful life, and they don’t understand that.” So he’s trying to examine that with a main character, Theo, who takes part in academic competitions but is also tall and being pressured to be on the basketball team, “and he’s kind of torn, and trying to do it all.”

Is Theo based on his own life?

“In some ways. His dad is a cop, like my dad. He’s tall at a very young age, like I was. Some of those things I understood very intimately, and I was able to get it on the page.”

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News, reviews, nuggets and tidbits from the local arts scene, including literature, theater, classical music, opera, dance and the visual arts.